I was able to transfer my miniDV to Preiere Elements and added some transitions along with dvd menu and markers. After burning the DVD I decided to watch it on my DVD player with the family. I noticed pixelation on the left hand side of the screen that last almost the entire length of my movie which was not there when I watched it on the tape.

Any Ideas why this is happening? might I have forgotten to do something?

I'd recommend you get a new camcorder or at least get your current one cleaned and tuned up. That definitely should not happen.

Premiere Elements is not causing it. MiniDV footage comes into Premiere Elements as data right from the camcorder's tape. The program does not change it in any way. Then it just transcodes it to VOB. Nothing it does could possibly cause this noise (unless you've adjusted the Scale or Position of your video).

It might be possible to Scale the footage up just a bit to eliminate that. To Scale, you would Select the Clip in the Timeline, then go to Effects, and choose Edit Effects. This will bring up the Effects Control Panel for that Clip. There, you will see the Fixed Effects, that are automatically applied to all Clips on the Timeline. One of those is Motion. If you twirl that down, you will see both Position and Scale. I would adjust Scale first, and then maybe a little Position, to try and hide that distortion. A little Scale will not be noticed, as far as quality goes, but one does not want to overdo things, as with much Scale, degradation to the overall Frame will take place.

If you have several Clips on the Timeline, with the same distortion, I would adujest Motion>Scale and possibly Motion>Position, as needed to the first Clip. When you have it, like you wish, Rt-click that Clip and choose Copy, then Select all other Clips with the same distortion, then Rt-Click on those, and choose Paste Attributes to apply that same set of adjustments to all of the rest.

This sounds like dirty head issue to me, so a good cleaning tape might take care of it in the future.

As for Rendering, this ARTICLE goes into a lot more detail on what it does, and when it can be beneficial. Note: after you Scale, you WILL get red lines over your Clips, so Rendering will allow those adjusted Clips to play their best in the Timeline.